A wildcard character can be used to substitute for any other character or characters in the search string. Wildcards act as placeholders for missing characters. For example, an asterisk (* ) matches any number of characters, including none, and the question mark (? ) matches any single character. The term wildcard or 'wild card' was originally used in card games to describe a card that can be assigned any value that its holder desires.
Wildcards that EasyFind understands:
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* : Matches none, one, or multiple characters
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[a-b] : Matches a range of characters
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[a|b|c|...] or [abc...] : Matches a choice of characters
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[^...] : Excludes characters
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? : Matches exactly one character
Example:
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Demo* : Everything starting with 'Demo' (Prefix)
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*ing : Everything ending with ing (Suffix)
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NS*.h : Everything starting with NS and ending with .h (e.g. all C header files)
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?ouse : All words with five characters and ending with ouse (e.g. 'mouse' or 'house')
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[a-ez]* : Everything starting with a , b , c , d , e , or z
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[d-fk-j]*[gh] : Everything starting with d , e , f , k , i , or j , and ending with g or h
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[^be]* : Everything not starting with b or e
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Search for file/folder names: When searching for file/folder names wildcards are applied to the whole search term:
Example:
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default*folder: Find all files with their name starting with "default" and ending in "folder".
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*default*folder*: Finds all files with the name containing "default" and "folder" in this order. The name does not need to start or end with these terms.
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Special handling of words containing hyphens and dots:
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Hyphens: E.g. e-mail is treated like (email OR "e mail") and therefore matches e.g. 'email', 'e-mail' or 'e mail'.
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Dots: Characters separated by dots are considered to be abbreviations and therefore handled like words separated by hyphens, e.g. the term a.b.c is equal to ("a b c" OR abc) and matches 'a b c', 'a.b.c', 'abc', 'a-b-c', etc.
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